


Who Leaves A Wedding Early?

by CommunionNimrod



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Drug Use, Episode: s03e02 The Sign of Three, F/M, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, in which Sherlock pines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 07:52:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1597295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommunionNimrod/pseuds/CommunionNimrod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Right after the events of The Sign of Three.  Sherlock is alone again, with John getting married and off to start his domesticated life.  The consulting detective copes in the best way he knows how.  Rated M for drug use descriptions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Leaves A Wedding Early?

“Who leaves a wedding early?” Mrs. Hudson had asked on that very morning.  Sherlock remembered it vividly.  He remembered everything vividly, of course.

 

So who leaves a wedding early? Sherlock Holmes leaves weddings early. It hadn’t been for all the reasons one would assume – the reasons **he** had presumed for himself.  No, it wasn’t for a murder, or because he was bored.  It was because he was heartbroken.

 

You left a wedding early if you saw the person you love more than anyone in love with someone else.

 

He didn’t used to feel this way. He didn’t have this sentiment. The two years he was away, being “dead” and destroying Moriarty’s network, changed him in so many ways he hadn’t been prepared for until he stepped back into Baker Street after it all. He was a different man. He cared.  He knew what it was like to be without the people that had always been close by in your life, and he had realized just what all he had taken for granted. John had been the most intense.

 

He had known from the start that John was different. He had known before he jumped that day that he was in love with John.  He hadn’t been prepared for John to be in love with someone else when he returned. He didn’t know what he had expected, really, but… It hadn’t been that.  As soon as Sherlock had learned to feel love and romantic anticipation, he also learned heartbreak.  Feelings he hadn’t felt since…

 

Mycroft wasn’t wrong to bring up Redbeard as he did. As much as Sherlock was loath to admit it, the scenarios were very similar.  He hadn’t wanted to get involved.  He had tried not to.  Apparently it had been inevitable, though.  It solidified itself, as he stood on that dance floor alone, watching John move away with Mary, his new bride, smiling and laughing at each other and dancing and loving one another in the exact way Sherlock loved John.

 

As always, he was alone.  It never used to bother him.  It did now.  As he looked around and saw everyone paired up, even Janine, who had seemed so interested in him earlier, and now… Sherlock didn’t have an ounce of romantic or sexual attraction for the woman, but it still hurt to not even get to join her. So the consulting detective did what he did best.  He left to be alone. Coat collar pulled up and wrapped around him tightly, he left early and didn’t look back.

 

Upon entering his flat, he found himself overrun by his emotions.  He became irrational, and had half a mind to walk over to that damn chair and set it on fire. He couldn’t bear to look at it. _John’s chair_.  It wasn’t John’s anymore.  This was not their flat anymore. This was his flat, and… that chair had to go.  He could no longer bear the sight of it.

 

While he did not light the offending furniture on fire, he did turn it over in his grief.  The small table next to it also went crashing to the floor, sending papers flying across the rug, and Sherlock didn’t care.  He shoved it over and he kicked at it once, twice, and a third time, before storming away from it and pacing in front of the sofa. Only after his tantrum was over did he lift it again.  Finally, it ended up in John’s old bedroom.  He didn’t go in there anymore.  He wanted to forget about it, because everything in there was so _John_ , and he couldn’t take it.  So it was appropriate that he would put the chair in there as well.

 

It was that same night that he turned back to cocaine. Sitting in his room, still wearing the trousers and dress shirt of his tuxedo, he rolled the sleeves up and stared at the box he’d dug out from under the floorboards. He stared at the needle that was held within it, and the bottle of liquid tucked in the velvet protection. The box had been covered in dust, untouched and forgotten for over six years.

 

 _Caring is not an advantage_.

 

Damn Mycroft.  He’d never hit the nail harder on the head before.  Sherlock didn’t want to care anymore.  It hurt to care.  It hurt more than any of the bullet wounds he’d ever taken.  It hurt more than all the torture he’d been dealt while he was away.  And so, he took out the needle and filled it with a proper dose, held it in front of him with analyzing eyes, and he made the caring stop.

 

The prick of the needle was sharp and oddly familiar. The fire he felt spread through his veins as the cocaine made its’ way into his body.  All the sensations were so familiar and foreign all at once. Setting the needle aside on the bed, he leaned back into his pillows as he became lightheaded, his tongue numb, and he sighed.  He fell into his Mind Palace, thoughts racing, and it was intoxicating.  He could think clearly again, and everything was fine. Everything was the way it needed to be.

 

John Watson was going to be off on his Sex Holiday with Mary.  Everyone would go back to work and home.  Sherlock would be here. He could feel himself falling, there were tears in his eyes, and his heart was still broken, and yet… everything would be okay.


End file.
